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NOTE 5. Determination and Its Critics

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PART 2 DETERMINISM AND MATERIALISM

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CHAPTER 5 DETERMINISM AND ITS CRITICS

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1 DETERMINISM

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Whatever the true nature of the universe and of reality may be, man can learn about it

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only what the logical structure of his mind makes comprehensible to him.

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Reason, the sole instrument of human science and philosophy, does not convey absolute knowledge

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and final wisdom.

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It is vain to speculate about ultimate things.

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What appears to man's inquiry as an ultimate given, defying further analysis and reduction

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to something more fundamental, may or may not appear such to a more perfect intellect.

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We do not know.

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Man cannot grasp either the concept of absolute nothingness or that of the genesis of something

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out of nothing.

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The very idea of creation transcends his comprehension.

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The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, whom Pascal in his memorial opposed to that of

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the philosophes et savants, is a living image and has a clear and definite meaning for the

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faithful believer.

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But the philosophers in their endeavors to construct a concept of God, his attributes,

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and his conduct of world affairs, became involved in insoluble contradictions and paradoxes.

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A God whose essence and ways of acting mortal man could neatly circumscribe and define,

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would not resemble the God of the prophets, the saints, and the mystics.

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The logical structure of his mind enjoins upon man determinism and the category of causality.

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As man sees it, whatever happens in the universe is the necessary evolution of forces, powers

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and qualities which were already present in the initial stage of the X out of which all

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things stem.

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All things in the universe are interconnected and all changes are the effects of powers

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inherent in things.

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No change occurs that would not be the necessary consequence of the preceding state.

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All facts are dependent upon and conditioned by their causes.

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No deviation from the necessary course of affairs is possible.

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Eternal law regulates everything.

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In this sense, determinism is the epistemological basis of the human search for knowledge.

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Man cannot even conceive the image of an undetermined universe.

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In such a world, there could not be any awareness of material things and their changes.

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It would appear a senseless chaos.

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Nothing could be identified and distinguished from anything else.

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Nothing could be expected and predicted.

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In the midst of such an environment, man would be as helpless as if spoken to in an unknown

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language.

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No action could be designed, still less put into execution.

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Man is what he is because he lives in a world of regularity and has the mental power to

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to Conceive the Relation of Cause and Effect.

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Any epistemological speculation must lead toward determinism, but the acceptance of

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determinism raises some theoretical difficulties that have seemed to be insoluble.

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While no philosophy has disproved determinism, there are some ideas that people have not

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been able to bring into agreement with it.

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Passionate attacks have been directed against it because people believed that it must ultimately

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result in absurdity.

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2.

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THE NEGATION OF IDEOLOGICAL FACTORS

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Many authors have assumed that determinism, fully implying consistent materialism, strictly

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denies that mental acts play any role in the course of events.

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Causation, in the context of the doctrine so understood, means mechanical causation.

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All changes are brought about by material entities, processes and events.

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Ideas are just intermediary stages in the process through which a material factor produces

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a definite material effect.

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They have no autonomous existence.

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They merely mirror the state of the material entities that begot them.

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There is no history of ideas and of actions directed by them.

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Only a history of the evolution of the real factors that engender ideas.

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From the point of view of this integral materialism, the only consistent materialist doctrine,

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the customary methods of historians and biographers are to be rejected as idealistic nonsense.

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It is vain to search for the development of certain ideas out of other previously held

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ideas.

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For example, it is unscientific to describe how the philosophical ideas of the seventeenth

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and eighteenth centuries evolved out of those of the sixteenth century.

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Scientific History would have to describe how out of the real, physical and biological

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conditions of each age, its philosophical tenets necessarily spring.

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It is unscientific to describe as a mental process the evolution of St. Augustine's ideas

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that led him from Cicero to Manichaeus and from Manichaeism to Catholicism.

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The scientific biographer would have to reveal the physiological processes that necessarily

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The Examination of Materialism is a task to be left to the following chapters.

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At this point, it is enough to establish the fact that determinism in itself does not imply

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any concessions to the materialist standpoint.

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It does not negate the obvious truth that ideas have an existence of their own, contribute

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to the emergence of other ideas, and influence one another.

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Does Not Deny Mental Causation and Does Not Reject History as a Metaphysical and Idealistic

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Illusion

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3.

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THE FREE WILL CONTROVERSY

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Man chooses between modes of action incompatible with one another.

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Such decisions, says the free will doctrine, are basically undetermined and uncaused.

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They are not the inevitable outcome of antecedent conditions.

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They are rather the display of man's inmost disposition, the manifestation of his indelible

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moral freedom.

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This moral liberty is the essential characteristic of man, raising him to a unique position in

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the universe.

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Determinists reject this doctrine as illusory.

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Man, they say, deceives himself in believing that he chooses.

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Something unknown to the individual directs his will.

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He thinks that he weighs in his mind the pros and cons of the alternatives left to his choice

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and then makes a decision.

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He fails to realize that the antecedent state of things enjoins on him a definite line of

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conduct and that there is no means to elude this pressure.

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Man does not act, he is acted upon.

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Both doctrines neglect to pay due attention to the role of ideas.

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The choices a man makes are determined by the ideas that he adopts.

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The determinists are right in asserting that everything that happens is the necessary sequel

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of the preceding state of things.

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What a man does at any instant of his life is entirely dependent on his past, that is,

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on his physiological inheritance as well as of all he went through in his previous days.

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Yet the significance of this thesis is considerably weakened by the fact that nothing is known

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Determinism is untenable if based upon or connected with the materialist dogma.

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If advanced without the support of materialism, it says little indeed and certainly does not

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sustain the determinist's rejection of the methods of history.

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The free will doctrine is correct in pointing out the fundamental difference between human

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action and animal behavior.

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While the animal cannot help yielding to the physiological impulse which prevails at the

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moment, man chooses between alternative modes of conduct.

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Man has the power to choose even between yielding to the most imperative instinct, that of self-preservation,

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and the aiming at other ends.

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All the sarcasm and sneers of the positivists cannot annul the fact that ideas have a real

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are real existence and are genuine factors in shaping the course of events.

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The offshoots of human mental efforts, the ideas and the judgments of value that direct

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the individual's actions, cannot be traced back to their causes and are in this sense

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ultimate data.

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In dealing with them we refer to the concept of individuality, but in resorting to this

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notion we by no means imply that ideas and judgments of value spring out of nothing by

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by a sort of spontaneous generation and are in no way connected and related to what was

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already in the universe before their appearance.

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We merely establish the fact that we do not know anything about the mental process which

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produces within a human being the thoughts that respond to the state of his physical

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and ideological environment.

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This cognition is the grain of truth in the free will doctrine.

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4.

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FOR ORDINATION AND FATALISM

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As theologians teach, God in His omniscience knows in advance all the things that will

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happen in the universe for all time to come.

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His foresight is unlimited and is not merely the result of His knowledge of the laws of

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becoming that determine all events.

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Even in a universe in which there is free will, whatever this may be, His precognition

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is perfect.

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He anticipates fully and correctly all the arbitrary decisions any individual will ever make.

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Laplace proudly declared that his system does not need to resort to the hypothesis of God's existence,

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but he constructed his own image of a quasi-God and called it superhuman intelligence.

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This hypothetical mind knows all things and events beforehand,

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But only because it is familiar with all the immutable and eternal laws regulating

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all occurrences, mental as well as physical. The idea of God's omniscience has been popularly

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pictured as a book in which all future things are recorded. No deviation from the lines described

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in this register is possible. All things will turn out precisely as written in it.

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What must happen will happen, no matter what mortal man may undertake to bring about a

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a different result. Hence, consistent fatalism concluded, it is useless for man to act. Why

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bother if everything must finally come to a preordained end?

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Fatalism is so contrary to human nature that few people were prepared to draw all the conclusions

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to which it leads and to adjust their conduct accordingly. It is a fable that the victories

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of the Arabian conquerors in the first centuries of Islam were due to the fatalist teachings

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of Muhammad.

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The leaders of the Moslem armies, which within an unbelievably short time conquered a great

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part of the Mediterranean area, did not put a fatalistic confidence in Allah.

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Rather, they believed that their God was for the big well-equipped and skillfully led battalions.

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Other reasons than blind trust in fate account for the courage of the Saracen warriors, and

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the Christians in the forces of Charles Martel and Leo the Assyrian who stopped their advance

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were no less courageous than the Moslems, although fatalism had no hold on their minds,

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nor was the lethargy which spread later among the Islamic peoples caused by the fatalism

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of their religion.

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It was despotism that paralyzed the initiative of the subject.

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The harsh tyrants who oppressed the masses were certainly not lethargic and apathetic.

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They were indefatigable in their quest for power, riches and pleasures.

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Researchers have claimed to have reliable knowledge of some pages, at least of the great

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book in which all coming events are recorded, but none of these prophets was consistent

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enough to reject activism and to advise his disciples to wait quietly for the day of fulfillment.

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The best illustration is provided by Marxism.

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It teaches perfect for ordination yet still aims to inflame people with revolutionary

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spirit.

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What is the use of revolutionary action if events must inevitably turn out according

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to a preordained plan, whatever men may do?

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Why are the Marxians so busy organizing socialist parties and sabotaging the operation of the

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market economy if socialism is bound to come anyway with the inexorability of a law of

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nature?

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It is a lame excuse indeed to declare that the task of a socialist party is not to bring

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about Socialism, but merely to provide obstetrical assistance at its birth.

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The obstetrician, too, diverts the course of events from the way they would run without

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his intervention.

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Otherwise, expectant mothers would not request his aid.

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Yet the essential teaching of Marxian dialectic materialism precludes the assumption that

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any political or ideological fact could influence the course of historical events, since the

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The latter are substantially determined by the evolution of the material productive forces.

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What brings about socialism is the operation of the imminent laws of capitalistic production

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itself.

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Ideas, political parties and revolutionary actions are merely superstructural.

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They can neither delay nor accelerate the march of history.

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Socialism will come when the material conditions for its appearance have matured in the womb

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Home of Capitalist Society, neither sooner nor later.

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If Marx had been consistent, he would not have embarked upon any political activity.

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Neither would he have written the often quoted eleventh aphorism on Feuerbach.

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The philosophers have only provided different interpretations of the world, but what matters

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is to change it.

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According to the teachings of dialectical materialism, only the evolution of the material

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Productive Forces, not the Philosophers, can change the world.

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He would have quietly waited for the day on which the

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knell of private capitalist property sounds.

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In dealing with fatalism, we may ignore the claims of soothsayers.

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Determinism has nothing at all to do with the art of fortune-tellers, crystal-gazers

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and astrologers, or with the more pretentious effusions of the authors of

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philosophies of history.

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It does not predict future events.

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It asserts that there is regularity in the universe and the concatenation of all phenomena.

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Those theologians who thought that in order to refute fatalism they must adopt a free-will

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doctrine were badly mistaken.

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They had a very defective image of God's omniscience.

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Their God would know only what is in perfect textbooks of the natural sciences.

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He would not know what is going on in human minds.

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He would not anticipate that some people might endorse the doctrine of fatalism and, sitting

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with clasped hands, indolently await the events which God, erroneously assuming that they

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would not indulge in inactivity, had meted out to them.

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5.

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DETERMINISM AND PANOLOGY

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A factor that often entered the controversies concerning determinism was misapprehension

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as to its practical consequences.

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All non-utilitarian systems of ethics look upon the moral law as something outside the

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nexus of means and ends.

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The moral code has no reference to human well-being and happiness, to expediency, and to the mundane

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striving after ends.

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It is heteronymous, that is to say, enjoined upon man by an agency that does not depend

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on human ideas and does not bother about human concerns.

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Some believe that this agency is God, others that it is the wisdom of the forefathers,

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some that it is a mystical inner voice alive in every decent man's conscience.

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He who violates the precepts of this code commits a sin, and his guilt makes him liable

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to punishment.

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Punishment does not serve human ends.

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In punishing offenders, the secular or theocratic authorities acquit themselves of a duty entrusted

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to Them by the Moral Code and its Author.

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They are bound to punish sin and guilt whatever the consequences of their action may be.

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Now these metaphysical notions of guilt, sin and retribution are incompatible with the

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doctrine of determinism.

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If all human actions are the inevitable effect of their causes, if the individual cannot

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help acting in the way antecedent conditions make him act, there can no longer be any question

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of guilt.

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What a haughty presumption to punish a man who simply did what the eternal laws of the

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universe had determined.

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The philosophers and lawyers who attacked determinism on these grounds failed to see

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that the doctrine of an almighty and omniscient God led to the same conclusions that moved

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them to reject philosophical determinism.

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If God is almighty, nothing can happen that He does not want to happen.

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If he is omniscient, he knows in advance all things that will happen.

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In either case, men cannot be considered answerable.

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The young Benjamin Franklin argued, from the supposed attributes of God, in this manner,

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that in erecting and governing the world, as he was infinitely wise, he knew what would

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be best.

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Infinitely good, he must be disposed, and infinitely powerful, he must be able to execute

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it.

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Consequently, all is right.

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Franklin very soon gave up this reasoning.

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He declared,

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The great uncertainty I found in metaphysical reasonings disgusted me, and I quitted that

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kind of reading and study for others more satisfactory.

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In the posthumous papers of Franz Brentano, a rather unconvincing reputation of Franklin's

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flash of thought was found.

249
00:19:26.520 --> 00:19:34.260
was published by Oscar Krauss in his edition of Brentano's Vom Ursprung Ziedlicher Erkenntnis.

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In fact, all attempts to justify, on metaphysical and theological grounds, society's right to

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punish those whose actions jeopardize peaceful social cooperation, are open to the same criticism

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that is leveled against philosophical determinism.

253
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Utilitarian ethics approaches the problem of punishment from a different angle.

254
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The offender is not punished because he is bad and deserves chastisement, but so that

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neither he nor other people will repeat the offense.

256
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Punishment is not inflicted as retribution and retaliation, but as a means to prevent

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future crimes.

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Legislators and judges are not the mandataries of a metaphysical retributive justice.

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They are committed to the task of safeguarding the smooth operation of society against encroachments

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6.

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DETERMINISM AND STATISTICS

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In the nineteenth century, some thinkers maintained that statistics have irrefutably demolished

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the doctrine of free will.

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It was argued that statistics show irregularity in the occurrence of certain human acts, for

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example, crimes and suicides.

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And this alleged regularity was interpreted by Adolf Cadillac and by Thomas Henry Buckel

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as an empirical demonstration of the correctness of rigid determinism.

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However, what the statistics of human actions really show is not regularity, but irregularity.

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The number of crimes, suicides and acts of forgetfulness, which plays such a conspicuous

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role in Buckle's deductions, varies from year to year.

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These yearly changes are as a rule small, and over a period of years they often, but

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not always, show a definite trend toward either increase or decrease.

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These statistics are indicative of historical change, not of regularity in the sense which

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which is attached to this term in the natural sciences.

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The specific understanding of history can try to interpret the why of such changes affected

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00:21:53.840 --> 00:21:59.020
in the past and to anticipate changes likely to happen in the future.

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In doing this, it deals with judgments of value determining the choice of ultimate ends,

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00:22:04.740 --> 00:22:09.380
with reasoning and knowledge determining the choice of means, and with theymological traits

279
00:22:09.380 --> 00:22:11.380
of individuals.

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must, sooner or later, but inevitably, reach a point at which it can only refer to individuality.

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00:22:18.820 --> 00:22:24.340
From beginning to end, the treatment of problems involved is bound to follow the lines of every

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scrutiny of human affairs.

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It must be teleological and, as such, radically different from the methods of the natural

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sciences.

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But Buckle, blinded by the positivist bigotry of his environment, was quick to formulate

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00:22:38.420 --> 00:22:40.360
his law.

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In a given state of society, a certain number of persons must put an end to their own life.

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00:22:46.160 --> 00:22:51.940
This is the general law, and the special question as to who shall commit the crime depends,

289
00:22:51.940 --> 00:22:56.960
of course, upon special laws, which, however, in their total action must obey the large

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00:22:56.960 --> 00:23:00.700
social law to which they are all subordinate.

291
00:23:00.700 --> 00:23:06.080
And the power of the larger law is so irresistible that neither the love of life nor the fear

292
00:23:06.080 --> 00:23:11.680
The fear of another world can avail anything towards even checking its operation.

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00:23:11.680 --> 00:23:17.760
Buckle's law seems to be very definite and unambiguous in its formulation, but in fact

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00:23:17.760 --> 00:23:23.500
it defeats itself entirely by including the phrase a given state of society, which even

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00:23:23.500 --> 00:23:28.660
an enthusiastic admirer of Buckle termed viciously vague.

296
00:23:28.660 --> 00:23:33.900
As Buckle does not provide us with criteria for determining changes in the state of society,

297
00:23:33.900 --> 00:23:39.380
This formulation can be neither verified nor disproved by experience and thus lacks the

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00:23:39.380 --> 00:23:43.520
distinctive mark of a law of the natural sciences.

299
00:23:43.520 --> 00:23:49.420
Many years after Buckel, eminent physicists began to assume that certain or even all laws

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00:23:49.420 --> 00:23:54.020
of mechanics may be only statistical in character.

301
00:23:54.020 --> 00:23:59.020
This doctrine was considered incompatible with determinism and causality.

302
00:23:59.020 --> 00:24:04.540
And later on, quantum mechanics considerably enlarged the scope of merely statistical

303
00:24:04.540 --> 00:24:05.740
physics.

304
00:24:05.740 --> 00:24:10.740
Many writers cast away all the epistemological principles that had guided the natural sciences

305
00:24:10.740 --> 00:24:12.380
for centuries.

306
00:24:12.380 --> 00:24:17.780
On the macroscopic scale, they say, we observe certain regularities which older generations

307
00:24:17.780 --> 00:24:22.100
erroneously interpreted as a manifestation of natural law.

308
00:24:22.100 --> 00:24:27.500
In fact, these regularities are the result of the statistical compensation of contingent

309
00:24:27.500 --> 00:24:29.060
Events.

310
00:24:29.060 --> 00:24:34.060
The apparent causal arrangement on a large scale is to be explained by the Law of Large

311
00:24:34.060 --> 00:24:35.060
Numbers.

312
00:24:35.060 --> 00:24:40.800
Now, the Law of Large Numbers and statistical compensation is operative only in fields in

313
00:24:40.800 --> 00:24:46.100
which there prevail large-scale regularity and homogeneity of such a character that they

314
00:24:46.100 --> 00:24:53.240
offset any irregularity in heterogeneity that may seem to exist on the small-scale level.

315
00:24:53.240 --> 00:24:58.280
If one assumes that seemingly contingent events always compensate one another in such a way

316
00:24:58.280 --> 00:25:03.340
that irregularity appears in the repeated observation of large numbers of these events,

317
00:25:03.340 --> 00:25:09.040
one implies that these events follow a definite pattern and can therefore no longer be considered

318
00:25:09.040 --> 00:25:11.400
as contingent.

319
00:25:11.400 --> 00:25:16.760
What we mean in speaking of natural law is that there is a regularity in the concatenation

320
00:25:16.760 --> 00:25:19.560
and sequence of phenomena.

321
00:25:19.560 --> 00:25:24.260
If a set of events on the microscopic scale always produces a definite event on the macroscopic

322
00:25:24.260 --> 00:25:27.960
scale, such irregularity is present.

323
00:25:27.960 --> 00:25:33.460
If there were no regularity in the microscopic scale, no regularity could emerge on the macroscopic

324
00:25:33.460 --> 00:25:36.040
scale either.

325
00:25:36.040 --> 00:25:40.360
Quantum mechanics deals with the fact that we do not know how an atom will behave in

326
00:25:40.360 --> 00:25:46.420
an individual instance, but we know what patterns of behavior can possibly occur and the proportion

327
00:25:46.420 --> 00:25:49.480
in which these patterns really occur.

328
00:25:49.480 --> 00:25:56.000
While the perfect form of a causal law is A produces B, there is also a less perfect

329
00:25:56.000 --> 00:26:07.280
form. A produces C in N percent of all cases, D in M percent of all cases, and so on. Perhaps

330
00:26:07.280 --> 00:26:12.920
it will at a later day be possible to dissolve this A of the less perfect form into a number

331
00:26:12.920 --> 00:26:18.480
of disparate elements to each of which a definite effect will be assigned according to the perfect

332
00:26:18.480 --> 00:26:20.060
Form.

333
00:26:20.060 --> 00:26:25.760
But whether this will happen or not is of no relevance for the problem of determinism.

334
00:26:25.760 --> 00:26:32.080
The imperfect law, too, is a causal law, although it discloses shortcomings in our knowledge.

335
00:26:32.080 --> 00:26:37.800
And because it is a display of a peculiar type both of knowledge and of ignorance, it

336
00:26:37.800 --> 00:26:42.360
opens a field for the employment of the calculus of probability.

337
00:26:42.360 --> 00:26:47.440
We know, with regard to a definite problem, all about the behavior of the whole class

338
00:26:47.440 --> 00:26:50.960
Class of Events We know that Class A will produce definite

339
00:26:50.960 --> 00:26:56.240
effects in a known proportion, but all we know about the individual A's is that they

340
00:26:56.240 --> 00:26:59.260
are members of the A Class.

341
00:26:59.260 --> 00:27:03.740
The mathematical formulation of this mixture of knowledge and ignorance is, we know the

342
00:27:03.740 --> 00:27:09.620
probability of the various effects that can possibly be produced by an individual A.

343
00:27:09.620 --> 00:27:15.240
What the neo-indeterminist school of physics fails to see is that the proposition A produces

344
00:27:15.240 --> 00:27:22.160
A always produces B in N% of the cases, and C in the rest of the cases is, epistemologically,

345
00:27:22.160 --> 00:27:27.240
not different from the proposition, A always produces B.

346
00:27:27.240 --> 00:27:33.360
The former proposition differs from the latter only in combining in its notion of A two elements,

347
00:27:33.360 --> 00:27:39.660
X and Y, which the perfect form of a causal law would have to distinguish, but no question

348
00:27:39.660 --> 00:27:42.340
of contingency is raised.

349
00:27:42.340 --> 00:27:47.820
Adam Mechanics does not say, the individual atoms behave like customers choosing dishes

350
00:27:47.820 --> 00:27:51.020
in a restaurant or voters casting their ballots.

351
00:27:51.020 --> 00:27:55.840
It says, the atoms invariably follow a definite pattern.

352
00:27:55.840 --> 00:28:00.980
This is also manifested in the fact that what it predicts about atoms contains no reference

353
00:28:00.980 --> 00:28:06.740
either to a definite period of time or to a definite location within the universe.

354
00:28:06.740 --> 00:28:11.520
One could not deal with the behavior of atoms in general, that is, without reference to

355
00:28:11.520 --> 00:28:38.480
In the field of human action, the determinist philosophers refer to statistics in order

356
00:28:38.480 --> 00:28:50.040
In the field of physics, the neo-indeterminist philosophers refer to statistics in order

357
00:28:50.040 --> 00:28:55.560
to refute the doctrine of determinism and to prove indeterminism in nature.

358
00:28:55.560 --> 00:29:02.840
The error of both sides arises from confusion as to the meaning of statistics.

359
00:29:02.840 --> 00:29:08.360
In the field of human action, statistics is a method of historical research.

360
00:29:08.360 --> 00:29:12.920
It is a description in numerical terms of historical events that happened in a definite

361
00:29:12.920 --> 00:29:18.760
period of time with definite groups of people in a definite geographical area.

362
00:29:18.760 --> 00:29:26.220
Its meaning consists precisely in the fact that it describes changes, not something unchanging.

363
00:29:26.220 --> 00:29:31.380
In the field of nature, statistics is a method of inductive research.

364
00:29:31.380 --> 00:29:35.920
Its epistemological justification and its meaning lie in the firm belief that there

365
00:29:35.920 --> 00:29:39.560
There are regularity and perfect determinism in nature.

366
00:29:39.560 --> 00:29:42.760
The laws of nature are considered perennial.

367
00:29:42.760 --> 00:29:45.620
They are fully operative in each instance.

368
00:29:45.620 --> 00:29:50.800
What happens in one case must also happen in all other like cases.

369
00:29:50.800 --> 00:29:57.040
Therefore, the information conveyed by statistical material has general validity with regard

370
00:29:57.040 --> 00:30:00.200
to the classes of phenomena to which it refers.

371
00:30:00.200 --> 00:30:05.880
IT DOES NOT CONCERN ONLY DEFINITE PERIODS OF HISTORY AND DEFINITE GEOGRAPHICAL SITES.

372
00:30:05.880 --> 00:30:11.860
UNFORTUNATELY, THE TWO ENTIRELY DIFFERENT CATEGORIES OF STATISTICS HAVE BEEN CONFUSED,

373
00:30:11.860 --> 00:30:16.000
AND THE MATTER HAS BEEN STILL FURTHER TANGLED BY JUMBLING IT TOGETHER WITH THE NOTION OF

374
00:30:16.000 --> 00:30:18.140
PROBABILITY.

375
00:30:18.140 --> 00:30:25.800
TO UNRAVEL THIS EMBROLEO OF ERRORS, MISUNDERSTANDING AND CONTRADICTIONS, LET US EMPHASIZE SOME TRUISMS.

376
00:30:25.800 --> 00:30:30.960
It is impossible, as has been pointed out earlier, for the human mind to think of any

377
00:30:30.960 --> 00:30:33.520
event as uncaused.

378
00:30:33.520 --> 00:30:39.320
The concepts of chance and contingency, if properly analyzed, do not refer ultimately

379
00:30:39.320 --> 00:30:41.840
to the course of events in the universe.

380
00:30:41.840 --> 00:30:46.380
They refer to human knowledge, pre-vision, and action.

381
00:30:46.380 --> 00:30:51.200
They have a praxeological, not an ontological connotation.

382
00:30:51.200 --> 00:30:56.220
Knowing an event contingent is not to deny that it is the necessary outcome of the preceding

383
00:30:56.220 --> 00:30:57.960
state of affairs.

384
00:30:57.960 --> 00:31:02.920
It means that we mortal men do not know whether or not it will happen.

385
00:31:02.920 --> 00:31:08.400
Our notion of nature refers to an ascertainable permanent regularity in the concatenation

386
00:31:08.400 --> 00:31:11.300
and sequence of phenomena.

387
00:31:11.300 --> 00:31:16.320
Whatever happens in nature and can be conceived by the natural sciences is the outcome of

388
00:31:16.320 --> 00:31:22.020
the operation, repeated and repeated again, of the same laws.

389
00:31:22.020 --> 00:31:26.080
Natural science means the cognition of these laws.

390
00:31:26.080 --> 00:31:31.440
The historical sciences of human action, on the other hand, deal with events which our

391
00:31:31.440 --> 00:31:37.000
mental faculties cannot interpret as a manifestation of a general law.

392
00:31:37.000 --> 00:31:41.560
They deal with individual men and individual events even in dealing with the affairs of

393
00:31:41.560 --> 00:31:46.600
of Masses, Peoples, Races and the Whole of Mankind.

394
00:31:46.600 --> 00:31:52.000
They deal with individuality and with an irreversible flux of events.

395
00:31:52.000 --> 00:31:57.620
If the natural sciences scrutinize an event that happened but once, such as a geological

396
00:31:57.620 --> 00:32:04.040
change or the biological evolution of a species, they look upon it as an instance of the operation

397
00:32:04.040 --> 00:32:05.920
of general laws.

398
00:32:05.920 --> 00:32:13.080
History is not in a position to trace events back to the operation of perennial laws. Therefore,

399
00:32:13.080 --> 00:32:17.740
in dealing with an event it is primarily interested not in the features such an event may have

400
00:32:17.740 --> 00:32:24.340
in common with other events but in its individual characteristics. In dealing with the assassination

401
00:32:24.340 --> 00:32:31.200
of Caesar, history does not study murder but the murder of the man Caesar. The very notion

402
00:32:31.200 --> 00:32:35.400
Transformation of a natural law whose validity is restricted to a definite period of time

403
00:32:35.400 --> 00:32:36.400
is self-contradictory.

404
00:32:36.400 --> 00:32:43.060
Experience, whether that of mundane observation as made in daily life or that of deliberately

405
00:32:43.060 --> 00:32:48.440
pre-arranged experiments, refers to individual historical cases.

406
00:32:48.440 --> 00:32:54.400
But the natural sciences, guided by their indispensable a prioristic determinism, assume

407
00:32:54.400 --> 00:32:59.700
that the law must manifest itself in every individual case and generalize by what is

408
00:32:59.700 --> 00:33:02.440
is called inductive inference.

409
00:33:02.440 --> 00:33:06.680
The present epistemological situation in the field of quantum mechanics would be correctly

410
00:33:06.680 --> 00:33:12.720
described by the statement, we know the various patterns according to which atoms behave,

411
00:33:12.720 --> 00:33:17.560
and we know the proportion in which each of these patterns becomes actual.

412
00:33:17.560 --> 00:33:22.760
This would describe the state of our knowledge as an instance of class probability.

413
00:33:22.760 --> 00:33:26.360
We know all about the behavior of the whole class.

414
00:33:26.360 --> 00:33:30.520
the behavior of the individual members of the class we know only that they are members.

415
00:33:31.560 --> 00:33:36.280
It is inexpedient and misleading to apply to the problems concerned,

416
00:33:36.280 --> 00:33:42.600
terms used in dealing with human action. Bertrand Russell resorts to such figurative speech.

417
00:33:43.480 --> 00:33:49.800
The atom will do something. There is a definite set of alternatives open to it

418
00:33:49.800 --> 00:33:55.640
and it chooses sometimes one, sometimes another. The reason Lord Russell chooses such

419
00:33:55.640 --> 00:34:00.220
In such inappropriate terms becomes obvious if we take into account the tendency of his

420
00:34:00.220 --> 00:34:03.180
book and of all his other writings.

421
00:34:03.180 --> 00:34:08.520
He wants to obliterate the difference between acting man and human action on the one hand

422
00:34:08.520 --> 00:34:11.900
and non-human events on the other hand.

423
00:34:11.900 --> 00:34:18.740
In his eyes, the difference between us and a stone is only one of degree, for, we react

424
00:34:18.740 --> 00:34:25.580
to stimuli, and so do stones, though the stimuli to which they react are fewer.

425
00:34:25.580 --> 00:34:31.500
Lord Russell admits to mention the fundamental difference in the way stones and men react.

426
00:34:31.500 --> 00:34:36.260
Stones react according to a perennial pattern which we call a law of nature.

427
00:34:36.260 --> 00:34:39.240
Men do not react in such a uniform way.

428
00:34:39.240 --> 00:34:45.820
They behave, as both praxeologists and historians say, in an individual way.

429
00:34:45.820 --> 00:34:51.540
Nobody has ever succeeded in assigning various men to classes each member of which behaves

430
00:34:51.540 --> 00:34:56.620
7.

431
00:34:56.620 --> 00:35:01.560
THE AUTONOMY OF THE SCIENCES OF HUMAN ACTION

432
00:35:01.560 --> 00:35:08.700
The phraseology employed in the old antagonism of determinism and indeterminism is inappropriate.

433
00:35:08.700 --> 00:35:13.220
It does not correctly describe the substance of the controversy.

434
00:35:13.220 --> 00:35:18.460
The search for knowledge is always concerned with the concatenation of events and the cognition

435
00:35:18.460 --> 00:35:21.140
of the factors producing change.

436
00:35:21.140 --> 00:35:25.720
In this sense, both the natural sciences and the sciences of human action are committed

437
00:35:25.720 --> 00:35:30.440
to the category of causality and to determinism.

438
00:35:30.440 --> 00:35:36.120
No action can ever succeed if not guided by a true, in the sense of pragmatism, insight

439
00:35:36.120 --> 00:35:40.100
into what is commonly called the relation of cause and effect.

440
00:35:40.100 --> 00:35:45.900
The fundamental category of action, namely means and ends, presupposes the category of

441
00:35:45.900 --> 00:35:48.040
cause and effect.

442
00:35:48.040 --> 00:35:53.560
What the sciences of human action must reject is not determinism but the positivistic and

443
00:35:53.560 --> 00:35:57.440
pan-physicalistic distortion of determinism.

444
00:35:57.440 --> 00:36:02.300
They stress the fact that ideas determine human action and that at least in the present

445
00:36:02.300 --> 00:36:06.720
state of human science it is impossible to reduce the emergence and the transformation

446
00:36:06.720 --> 00:36:11.440
of ideas to physical, chemical or biological factors.

447
00:36:11.440 --> 00:36:18.000
It is this impossibility that constitutes the autonomy of the sciences of human action.

448
00:36:18.000 --> 00:36:22.720
Perhaps natural science will one day be in a position to describe the physical, chemical

449
00:36:22.720 --> 00:36:28.240
and biological events which in the body of the man Newton necessarily and inevitably

450
00:36:28.240 --> 00:36:31.280
produced the theory of gravitation.

451
00:36:31.280 --> 00:36:36.040
In the meantime, we must be content with the study of the history of ideas as a part of

452
00:36:36.040 --> 00:36:39.040
the sciences of human action.

453
00:36:39.040 --> 00:36:43.560
The sciences of human action by no means reject determinism.

454
00:36:43.560 --> 00:36:48.960
The object of history is to bring out in full relief the factors that were operative in

455
00:36:48.960 --> 00:36:51.880
producing a definite event.

456
00:36:51.880 --> 00:36:56.200
History is entirely guided by the category of cause and effect.

457
00:36:56.200 --> 00:37:01.020
In retrospect, there is no question of contingency.

458
00:37:01.020 --> 00:37:07.400
The notion of contingency as employed in dealing with human action always refers to man's uncertainty

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The Theory about the future and the limitations of the specific historical understanding of

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future events.

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It refers to a limitation of the human search for knowledge, not to a condition of the universe

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or of some of its parts.